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Captain Etaera Lin

Character Information

Gender

Female

Species

Trill (Joined)

Age

38

Awards

Physical Appearance

Height

5'4"

Weight

110

Hair Color

Black

Eye Color

Brown

Physical Description

Standing approximately 5’4”, Etaera is on the short side of average height for a humanoid female. Her skintone is a warm honey brown, and the dark spots that are the hallmark of her race stand out in sharp contrast along her face and side. She has black hair, that has a slight natural curl to it, and falls to just below her shoulders. She tends to keep it down and straight regardless of whether or not she’s on duty, as she believes she should be permitted at least that vanity.

Her angular facial features, high cheekbones, and thin nose certainly cut a attractive image. Combine all of these together with her even spattering of spots, her sleek black hair, and her almond-shaped brown eyes, and the resulting package is striking to say the least.

Her body is slender, but muscularly built, as she endeavors to spend her free time practicing Yoga, or Tai Chi whenever possible. Though she doesn’t look like it, she has a surprising core physical strength.

Family

Father

Stalen Zadi

Mother

Teema Zadi

Sister(s)

Amera Zadi

Personality & Traits

General Overview

For someone who’s integrated 6 lifetimes worth of information into her personality, Etaera is exceedingly stable. In fact, most would say it’s one of her best traits. She isn’t the sort of woman who changes her mind easily, or who gets angry at the drop of a hat. Nearly nothing bothers her, and in the event that she does become bothered, she hides it well. She understands that one of the hallmarks of a good leader is pretending to have faith, even when isn’t quite certain; that improves ship’s morale.

Etaera is an extremely practical person, and she places her work, and her command above everything else in her life. She was ambitious by nature, and now that she has joined with the Lin symbiont and understands what is necessary to get ahead in Starfleet, she is even more ambitious. Until the Hitomi “Incident” she had no self-doubt, but even since then she still believes that she has the capability and the drive to become an Admiral herself.

That’s not to say that Etaera’s hamartia is destined to be hubris. Etaera is quite patient, and is willing to wait for the right opportunities. As a First Officer, she was given several shots at her own command before she took over the Hitomi, and two of the ships she’d been offered ended up getting destroyed in bad encounters. Some would consider it luck that she’d managed to dodge those bullets, but Etaera considers it a perceptiveness bred from many years of experience. Or at least, that’s what she thought until she lost the Hitomi.

However, Etaera does have her flaws. What she claims is realism is really closer to pessimism, as several of those positions she turned down would have likely been quite good for her. And as she gets older, she sees the fact that her single-minded pursuit of her own career has meant she never had time for a family of her own. Certainly, there had been men. There had even been men that wanted to settle down with her. But all of these were distractions from the goal in her life. Having experienced death several times over, she comes off as fatalistic at times. But in reality, she just has a better idea of how the cycle works, and she takes comfort from the knowledge that a part of her will carry on for as long as her symbiont is alive.

Socially, she is reserved, yet prone to bursts of immense wit. She is prone to referring to Starfleet Admirals by their given names and not their ranks, and for the most part, they accept it.

Born on the Trill Homeworld, it was only natural that Etaera was born with an utmost respect for those few who were lucky enough to be joined. She was told the tales of those who had been so lucky, and how they had done amazing things like complete generations worth of scientific research in decades, or helped mediate disputes as diplomats. She threw herself into her studies with vigor, knowing that in order to get chosen she would need to be better than the numerous other Trill who applied for the Honor.

The Symbiosis Commission is hard no matter how resilient a candidate is, and it taught Etaera the ability to bear down, and to keep pushing, even when she thought she wasn’t capable of anything more. Every time a candidate dropped out of the program, she got a special little thrill from her own ability to persevere.

After completing her basic education, and the classes that were prerequisite for any Trill hoping to be joined, she submitted her application for a symbiont. Knowing that it was a process that frequently took several years, she also applied to Starfleet. As she had studied the sciences back on Trill, she began in the science division, although she performed extremely well in her pilot aptitude tests as well. She began to realize that there was more to life than simply being joined, although she still kept herself on the waiting list.

She was a Cadet First Class when the Symbiosis Commission got in contact with her. There was a Trill who’d become a Starfleet Admiral, and he had reached advanced age. His Doctors believed that he only had a short time left, and had sent him back to the Trill homeworld so his symbiont could be placed in a new host. The Symbiosis Commission agreed that if there was a member of Starfleet who was on the waiting list for a symbiont who was found to be a suitable match that they would try and arrange it so that Starfleet would be able to continue to reap the knowledge they’d imparted on that admiral. In the end, Etaera was found suitable, and was rushed with Khedan Lin back to the Trill homeworld to undergo her joining.

She took time off from the Academy to adapt to the changes that resulted from being joined, although this only put her slightly behind the rest of her class. She did decide to change tracks at the Academy to her second choice of command. Between these two things, she graduated a year behind. She would graduate with modest honors, and be assigned as a gamma shift flight control officer on a light frigate.

It was an interesting experience, as those who were less familiar with Admiral Lin assumed that she was his granddaughter, or perhaps a late in life child. It was also fun for her knowing random things about several Captains that had been under Admiral Lin’s command. She quickly made Lieutenant JG, and after their Chief of Flight Ops was transferred to another vessel, she was promoted to Chief at the age of 28.

She served as Chief of Flight Operations for five years, before transferring to a Galaxy-class vessel named the USS Hitomi. The Hitomi was assigned to the Beta Quadrant, where they were on an exploratory mission. She continued impressing superiors and moving up the ranks there. When their First Officer was killed in an unfortunate incident in battle, she was promoted to First Officer of the Hitomi.

The Hitomi’s Captain would be promoted to Commodore a few years later, and Etaera would take over command of the Hitomi. As Captain, she assisted in numerous First Contact situations, and was well known for her ability to respond well to crisis situations. She had an untarnished personnel record, and she’d networked well with the higher ups in Starfleet Command, having known many of them in her previous life.

Unfortunately, when she finally did err, it was in a rather large way. The Hitomi had been drawn to the edge of Romulan Neutral Zone in pursuit of a Trill science vessel performing research in creating stable wormholes. As it appeared to Etaera, the vessel had unknowingly strayed into Romulan territory, or the Captain had gone just slightly into the zone to get better readouts. Etaera knew the research was important to the Federation, and that it couldn’t fall into the Romulan’s hands.

She also knew the pilot of the Romulan vessel. One of his previous hosts had been married to one of Lin’s previous hosts.

Etaera already gauged the research as too valuable to lose even without counting the loss of two symbionts, so the extra personal connection spurned her to perform a saucer separation, send the Hitomi’s civilians away, and enter the Neutral zone. The science vessel was badly damaged, and she knew that they had to act quickly or the vessel’s warp core would breach.

Unfortunately, the Trill she thought she knew had in fact been manipulated into working for the Romulans, and as the Hitomi approached the Trill vessel, two D’deridex warbirds began to decloak. When hailed, the Romulan commander vaguely specified some agreement with the Federation to protect the Trill vessel, noting that the Hitomi’s presence in the neutral zone had not been agreed to, and thusly would be construed as an act of war. Captain Lin attempted to engage both warbirds, and quickly realized that they were outmatched. They turned about to return to Federation space, with the warbirds hot on their tail the whole way. When it seemed like all hope was lost, she jettisoned the warp core; using the force of it’s detonation to not only destroy one warbird but also to propel the Hitomi into Federation space.

Devastated by the Hitomi’s loss, and the loss of the research team, Etaera licked her wounds while she waited for another Starfleet vessel to come retrieve the tattered remains of the Hitomi’s stardrive section.

As soon as her XO’s report hit the desks of the Admiralty, she was relocated to a comfortable position in the brig. For the entire journey back to San Francisco, she worried that the even might have provoked war… only to find out she’d just barely been spared by a bigger threat to the Romulans: the destruction of their home planet.

It was an awful thing to secretly be relieved that a catastrophic loss could have avoided war, and though she tried her hardest not to feel that, way, it crept into her subconscious, wrapping it’s tendrils around her mind. It didn’t help matters that the Federation News Service had caught word of Hitomi’s “incident,” causing her return to be far more traumatic than even she had expected.

Starfleet Command could not initially devote resources to what she had done. She needed a trial but deserved an unbiased one, and too many knew her, or others involved. Resources were already slim because they were responding to Romulan territory to try and sort out the situation there, and to prevent other hostile forces from an easy acquisition of Romulan territory.

Her trial wasn’t a short one either. Try as they might to keep the proceedings out of the media spectacle, news personnel still managed to find insiders and taint those in charge of the decision-making. Once it had commenced, there was a rather rapid verdict, but the matter of the punishment was a far trickier matter.

Even ignoring the entire career of Etaera Lin, she contained the knowledge of Fleet Admiral Khedan Lin. Simply kicking her out of Starfleet was not only a tremendous waste, but also a huge security risk. It was also the first blemish in an otherwise sterling career, though one that caused the loss of a Galaxy-class starship and nearly 100 of her crew. Etaera was eventally sentenced perform a mandatory period of two years working a more-or-less menial desk job in Starfleet Command’s historical records department. She was also demoted to Lieutenant Commander.

Privately, Etaera suspected her sentence was equal parts penance and detraction: by the time two years had passed, much of the uproar and hubbub would have settled, thus making it easier to keep her in the CO’s chair without causing too much of a stir. However, if Etaera showed up to Starfleet Command at the end of two years expecting to be provided with the hypothetical keys to a shiny new command, she was sorely mistaken.

The USS Cerberus isn’t a bad command; Etaera knows full well that it’s better than the freight vessel or escort that she could have received. It’s a cruiser at least, and one with a formidable array of options. Still, the command chair seems a little bit smaller to her, and her flight controllers might as well be sitting on her lap telling her what they want for Christmas.